Boeing outsells Airbus at Paris Air Show

SEATTLE—On the final business day of the Paris Air Show, Boeing emerged the clear winner over rival Airbus thanks largely to sales of the 737 MAX. The 737 MAX 10 successfully launched in Paris was “clearly the star of the show,” said Boeing vice president for marketing Randy Tinseth, who said additional Boeing widebody jet sales could also help buoy production rates in Everett, a city in the Seattle area, where Boeing has a big presence. Counting new firm orders and commitments, Boeing won 571 sales in Paris. Airbus claimed 336.

At list prices, the Boeing sales haul in Paris added up to $75 billion. According to market pricing data from aircraft valuation firm Avitas, the real value, after standard industry discounts, would be about $35 billion. However, given that many of the sales were launch orders for a new jet model, the discounts were probably even heftier, meaning even the $35 billion figure is high. The Airbus sales were worth about $39 billion at list prices, with an Avitas-estimated real value after standard discounts of $17 billion. That said, Air Show commitments don’t always materialize to become actual purchases.

At the last Paris Air Show in 2015, Garuda Indonesia announced twin sales agreements—one with Boeing to buy 30 Dreamliners and one with Airbus to buy 30 of the competing A350 jet. Garuda later decided it would finalize only one of those agreements and, two years later, it’s still negotiating and hasn’t decided between the two. At Paris 2017, Boeing announced 147 incremental orders and commitments for the MAX 10.

In addition, a further 214 orders were booked for the MAX 10 as conversions of previous orders for other MAX models. Boeing also announced 368 sales of other versions of the MAX, including a large purchase agreement signed Thursday for 125 MAX 8s from “an unidentified major airline customer.”

In sales of the larger and more expensive widebody jets, Boeing won 50 sales of the 787 Dreamliner and six of the present model 777 jet. The 787 sales included an order for 30 from the world’s largest aircraft lessor, Aercap, which, with that order, overtook All Nippon Airways of Japan as the largest 787 customer.

Boeing is rolling out a dozen 787s per month off its assembly lines in Everett and North Charleston, S.C., and has said it would like to raise that rate to 14 jets per month by decade’s end.

It’s been waiting for further orders before firmly committing to do so, and Paris offered a boost to that prospect.

The six orders for the current 777 are also significant, in that they will help bridge the production gap in Everett before Boeing starts manufacturing the new model 777X, Tinseth said.